Coding computer whiz kid hopes to inspire others

He's a computer programming sensation, an author, a teacher, a keynote speaker, an IBM advisor... and he's only thirteen years old.

Tanmay Bakshi is being described as an artificial intelligence whiz kid and the Canadian boy with a big brain is visiting New Zealand.

Tanmay Bakshi took 69 of Mozart's piano sonatas and 114 of Beethoven's and fed them into what is essentially a computer brain. And after just seven hours of training it was able to create great sounding music.

"I don't really call it a job. It's a passion. Something that I love to do," he told Newshub.

And he's doing rather well. In New Zealand for an AI showcase tomorrow, he created his first app at eight and is the World's Youngest programmer of the famous, fast-thinking IBM WATSON AI super computer.

But it's Tanmay who's shot to fame. The gifted coder now shares his knowledge through a YouTube channel.

He says his passion was sparked by his father, also a coder.

"I would watch him programming all day as a five-year-old and it was fascinating that a computer could do simple things at that age like changing the colour of the screens."

Home-schooled, Tanmay wants to inspire other kids to harness the power of AI... and highlight its limitations.

"It's not creating new Mozarts or new Beethovens that are much better than the original; it's creating things that like to imitate or mimic what they did," he says.